RIOTSOUND.COM: A lot of artists own their own labels now and they can basically work with whoever they want as opposed to a major label telling them who they can and can’t work with. Do you think that whole entrepreneurial spirit that’s picked up so much steam over the past several years is partly responsible for more artists working together and collaborating in a positive way?

KURUPT: I think it’s a mixture of that and plus it’s a whole new millennium of Hip-Hop for the West Coast. Everything advances. I don’t think we knew how to unify back in the days, everybody was going for self. Over time I think we’ve learned a lot from the East Coast and from Down South on how to unify within ourselves. Snoopy just really put it together with that Western Conference [unity summit] and put the first step towards showing everybody that we can do this - if I put the first step towards it then ya’ll gotta do the rest. So, we here now doing it, ya dig.

RIOTSOUND.COM: Recently there’s been a lot of media coverage of various violent incidents involving rap artists. You actually came up right in the middle of the East Coast / West Coast fued, which was a very turbulent time in Hip-Hop, so you’ve seen how the media portrays things with regard to rap and violence. In your view, what’s the biggest disservice that mainstream media does to Hip-Hop in the way they cover these kind of incidents?

KURUPT: I don’t fool too much with the media. The media is gonna be the media. I really got no opinion towards these guys, they doing their job. They gotta do their job any way they can and with the media game, it’s all about the excitement of they story. So they gotta add things to make it more exciting. But hey, to each his own.

RIOTSOUND.COM: You got the new album, Cali Iz Active, in stores now; what else should the fans be looking out for as far as Tha Dogg Pound goes?

KURUPT: Look out for our solo albums. Daz got a solo album with Jermaine Dupri dropping August 1st. Then you also got my independent solo album, Young Gotti, that’s dropping June 20th. So look out for them projects right there and also look out for Daz and mine’s DVD, Dillinger Gotti 3. We also got a movie we working on; it’s something Snoop and DJ Clue put together called Go Hard. Daz also got a movie that he wrote that Ice Cube is gonna be putting his hand into called My Summer Vacation. We gonna be filming it in St. Louis.

So we got a lot of things in the works; we hittin’ the movie screen, we hittin’ the music game by dropping these albums, we making a move. People should be looking out for us. Tell all our fans we love them for their support.